On Your Mark, Give Birth, Go Back To Work

Tricia Olson takes a selfie of herself and her son Augustus, or Gus, who sits in his car seat. Olson took three weeks of unpaid leave from her job at a towing company in Rock Springs, Wyo., after giving birth.

Normally, she's the only one in the office to take calls. Her boss agreed to fill in for her for three weeks after the delivery, but she says "even just that ... makes me feel guilty."

Olson is hardly alone in returning to work so early. But this is a uniquely American problem.

"The U.S. is absolutely the only high-income country that doesn't" provide paid maternity leave, says Jody Heymann of UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health.

In fact, of the 193 countries in the United Nations, Heymann says, 185 have national paid leave laws. Those that don't are Papua New Guinea, Suriname, a few small South Pacific Island states — and the United States.

Even many low- and middle-income countries provide at least 14 weeks of paid leave, Heymannn says, and have done so for decades. Fifty nations provide six months of leave or more.

The International Labor Organization made paid maternity leave a priority a century ago. But Heymann says "most countries, just seeing what it was like for women to try to balance work and caregiving, knew they had to do it for the sake of families, for the sake of kids and for the success of their economies."

Why didn't the U.S. join that trend? Family law experts point back to the aftermath of World War II. European nations needed women in the workplace to help with reconstruction. But in the U.S., untouched by conflict, women who had been working in factories went back into the home after returning soldiers reclaimed their jobs. Analysts also credit a powerful business lobby, weak unions and a national mindset that relies more on the individual than the state.

Given all that, it was a tough political battle in the U.S. just to pass unpaid leave, and that didn't happen until 1993. The Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, guarantees up to 12 weeks of time off, without pay. It applies to both women and men, and can be used not just for a new child, but also to recover from an illness or care for a loved one.

Yet the law doesn't cover some 40 percent of the workforce, including those — like Tricia Olson — who work for companies with fewer than 50 employees, or those who work too few hours. Many others who do qualify for FMLA say they just can't afford to go without a paycheck.

California, Rhode Island and New Jersey provide four to six weeks of leave with partial pay, funded by employees through a disability insurance program. This year, New York passed the nation's most generous paid family leave law, to take effect in 2018. It will start with a guarantee of eight weeks off, eventually rising to 12 weeks as early as 2021.

Local business groups have largely opposed such laws, arguing they are burdensome to administer and hurt the business climate. In a memo to lawmakers in Albany, N.Y., the Business Council of New York State said companies will face "increased personnel costs through overtime and diminished morale for those who pick up the slack from these additional absences."

There's also congressional legislation that would mandate a national program of paid family leave, but it's failed to pass for several years. In the past, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has argued that a one-size-fits-all mandate is unworkable, and that individual companies should be able to decide whether to offer paid family leave, and how much. But there are signs that business opposition to paid leave laws is softening.

"Look at the cost of losing loyal talent, losing workers with some institutional knowledge," says Vicki Shabo of the National Partnership for Women and Families.

In recent years, a wave of companies have adopted paid family leave, including big names such as Nike, Coca-Cola and Hilton. Silicon Valley, especially, has seen something of a benefits race, with businesses offering ever more generous terms as they compete for highly skilled tech workers, and try to attract and retain more women to an overwhelmingly male industry.

In just one example, Vodafone this year announced a new policy of four months of paid maternity leave. It also said that after new mothers return from leave, it will pay their full salary for just 30 hours of work, for up to six months. A number of other companies this year extended the duration of their existing paid parental leave programs.

Paid leave has strong public support, especially among so-called millennials, young adults under 35. Surveys find both women and men care deeply about it, and are demanding it from employers. Researchers applaud this, and say the more time a father spends with a child in those early weeks and months, the more engaged he's likely to be for years to come. That, in turn, can help the mother maintain her own career.

"Paid family and medical leave is a public good as well as private benefit," says Shabo, the women and families advocate.

There's also evidence that paid maternity leave has health benefits for both mother and infant. Dr. Benard Dreyer, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, says women with paid leave are more likely to breastfeed, and to do so for longer, and that has "very strong long-term effects on child health."

In Wyoming, Tricia Olson says she decided not to breastfeed her son in part because of her short time off. Plus, she couldn't imagine keeping it up at work, given the large window in her office.

Olson and her husband discussed the possibility of her switching jobs. But they decided that while she doesn't get paid leave or other traditional benefits at her current workplace, she values the flexibility she has to be able to take time off — albeit unpaid — to take care of things at home.

Of course, Olson wishes she could have stayed home longer. But she's grateful to her co-workers for the few weeks she had, and determined to get through the next few months balancing her job and her baby.

"We will make it work," she says. "We don't really have a choice."

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KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

American working parents do not have it easy. They are pulled in a lot of different directions.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: It's about the busiest I've ever been.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: When I was in labor, I was responding to emails and receiving calls for work.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #4: Even just pumping one time at work makes getting through the day a lot more challenging.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: In a way it feels like I'm kind of set up to fail.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #5: (Laughter) I feel like I have three full-time jobs, yes.

MCEVERS: In a series we're calling Stretched, we are stepping into the world of working parents. And today we meet Tricia Olson of Rock Springs, Wyo.

TRICIA OLSON: I work for a small company. We do towing, and we do U-Haul rentals.

MCEVERS: It's a really small company. She is one of four employees. For the past 12 years, Tricia has dispatched tow trucks, kept the inventory straight, handled customers. In August when she was at the very end of her pregnancy with baby boy Gus, she started keeping an audio diary.

OLSON: My boss has been amazing and hilarious, and we keep joking about how long I'll be out for and how the place is going to fall apart without me.

MCEVERS: The amount of time Tricia is going to be out with Gus - two weeks, maybe three. Like most American workers, she has no paid parental leave. She actually has no paid leave at all, no vacation or sick days. So she negotiated with her boss to take the time off unpaid. She and her husband couldn't afford to go any longer without her paycheck, and even if they could, her boss was under no legal obligation to say yes to more time. And while this is one of the happiest times in Tricia's life, she also feels bad.

OLSON: Even just that two to three weeks makes me feel guilty - leaving them without someone there. And it's such a small business, anyways. There's only three of us in the office Monday through Friday. And two of them are tow truck drivers, so they're gone whenever the phone rings. So leaving them without sucks a little bit. It's also necessary because my son will be here tomorrow, and that's a crazy thought.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUS: (Crying).

OLSON: So I'm a mom. That's weird to say. It's been a quick couple of days, and wow, yeah, a lot's happened - kind of made myself a little nest in the corner of my couch and put a garbage pail next to me and his diapers and wipes and his bottles. I don't even have to get up.

And I sat on the couch with him in his Rock 'n Play and took care of him for the first night. And I didn't do too bad I think (laughter). We've got some learning to do, so it's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun. I'm excited and already so in love with him (laughter).

GUS: (Crying).

OLSON: I know.

OK, so I've got Gus on kind of a schedule. So I was getting stuff out and getting stuff ready for when he wakes up, and it got me thinking about something that having a short maternity leave made me decide. We'd gone back and forth on whether I was going to breast-feed or bottle-feed. And while it wasn't the reason, having such a short time to be home really encouraged me to actually bottle-feed because I only have two - possibly two weeks, maybe three. We really don't know yet.

But I can spend those two weeks bonding and learning how to take care of him, or I can spend those two weeks trying to learn to breast-feed. And while it comes easy for a lot of women, it can be extremely difficult for a lot of women. And while I could, you know, breast-feed and then when I go back to work, I could pump, my office is actually glass, so there's not really a place that you can pump that's not extremely visible (laughter) from the street.

Again, there was other reasons that made me decide to do bottle, and I'm super happy with it. It's letting me enjoy this little bit of time that I have. But I wonder if it had been different if I had more time at home.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

OLSON: It's the first day back to work today. We did a trial run with the sitter last week to make sure she had all the things that she needed and that I brought her everything. And every time I meet with her, I feel more comfortable with her, so that's really awesome. I'm going to drink all the coffee - all the coffee - and stuff my pockets with Kleenex, and that will be my day.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

OLSON: I dropped Gus off at the sitter's, and I only lost it for a little bit just as I was leaving. I know he'll be fine. I just wish I could be there, not here. But finances don't really give me that option (laughter).

We have to work, have to have money. The house bill's not going to pay itself, and we will make it work - don't really have a choice. I'm just glad he gets to be with people who will take care of him and make sure that he's OK till I can be there.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MCEVERS: Here's the thing. Tricia Olson's story is not unusual, at least not in the U.S. Jody Heymann of UCLA's World Policy Analysis Center says when it comes to parental leave, the U.S. is an outlier.

JODY HEYMANN: So there are 193 countries in the United Nations. Of those, completely remarkably, 185 provide paid maternity leave. That's nearly everybody. Who doesn't - just Papua New Guinea, Surinam, a few small South Pacific island states and the United States of America.

MCEVERS: We're going to talk about all this over the next couple of weeks in this series about working parents. We're calling it Stretched. If you are one of the many people out there juggling kids and a job, we want to hear from you.

How much time did you take off with your baby? Was it enough? Tell us in a voice memo on your smartphone and send it to us at nprcrowdsource@npr.org. Make sure to include your name and where you're from. Tomorrow, a warehouse manager from Alexandria, Va., tells us what it's like to be a working dad in America. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.